


life's a drink (and love's a drug)

by niniadepapa



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 14:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6011218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niniadepapa/pseuds/niniadepapa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>an updated 'accidentally read your diary oops' au - also known as 'accidentally went through your phone oops' au for a terribly ordinary day such as february 14th.</p>
            </blockquote>





	life's a drink (and love's a drug)

**Author's Note:**

> title from a song in coldplay's new album, 'hymn for the weekend' :)

Once she goes back to the beginning of it all, she only has Will to blame. She should be more surprised by this realization, but the truth of the matter is that she’s not, because, as it turns out, Will is the bane of her existence, as if he somehow turned up in her life just to mess with it, one cockney-accented word at a time.

See, the thing is that Will, with a past as colorful as his, finds a new way to use his ‘talent’ to annoy the hell out of their group of friends leaving out the possibility of jail time - mostly because he doesn't think his friends would go so far as to drag his ass down to the sheriff station. Truth be told, Emma wouldn’t feel so sure about that, if she were him, but oh well.

Summing up: Will had started what they had dubbed as the Big Troll War of 2015. Its plan of attack mainly consists in finding out everybody’s phone lock code and posting anything as potentially embarrassing as possible on any social media the user has on said phone. The Big Troll War of 2015 has taken its toll on its contenders: David has uninstalled both Twitter and Facebook on his phone, Mulan changes her code every 24 hours and Graham has legit announced that he would cuff whoever dares to mess with him to a chair for the night. 

(Poor Graham has been one of the most affected by the war. Apparently reading about how the sheriff owns a Trump supporter shirt had been going too far by everybody’s standards.) 

Anyway, let’s just say that Emma has a vendetta to settle with Killian. Friends don’t play with other friends’ followers emotions. Friends don’t mess with other friends, period. Let’s just say that he had taken a picture of her on her own phone as she was asleep on the couch. The picture itself could have been a lot worse than it turned out, even if it was embarrassing alright; at least there had been no drool. Small mercies. 

But Jones had included in the picture the TV in the background, which had been playing one of her favorite scenes ever, and he had added the most insulting caption ever:

#zzzzzz

Emma had woken up to so many notifications from her confused followers asking why she found her favorite couple and characters boring, she had wanted to kill Jones just to bring him back from the dead and send him back. Since then, she had played her part: first rightly pissed off, then begrudgingly accepting of his apology, and finally cool, biding her time until her moment came…

…and she succeeded in sneaking behind a door while he unlocked his phone and she memorized his code.

_HA_.

Which brings us back to the present day in the middle of the Big Troll War of 2015,when Emma finds herself at Killian’s place with his phone in her hands and about to tweet from his main account. She knows all about his secret one where he rants about the failures of his TV shows - she is, after all, one of the lucky 10 followers who are allowed to read all about it - but the more followers, the bigger drama. Peeking over her shoulder to check that he is still in the shower, she enters the code once more and readies herself to start typing when a text message from Will pops up at the top of the screen. 

_you’re pathetic jones. are you ever gonna ask her out or what_

She freezes, all thoughts of typing her carefully crafted revenge tweet forgotten. Ask someone out? _Killian?_ She didn’t even know he was interested in somebody! They were best friends, they shared everything, she’d have thought he’d have told her if he had been thinking about asking someone out, right?

(And another titillating thought: after that kind-of-drunken kiss they had shared at the bar a couple of months ago that they both had wisely ignored to acknowledge because it’d ruin their friendship… if there had been anyone, why not _her_? The girl who had kissed him for a touch too long, whose lipstick had smeared on the corner of his mouth and she had swiped off with her fingers in between giggles?)

(She knew the answer, but she didn’t want to admit it.) (It had been a mistake, and she shouldn’t even be thinking about it.) 

She bites her lip, feeling oddly curious and… something else that she’d rather not consider at the moment. She thinks about reading the rest of the conversation - what had Killian said that had made Will answer that? - but then he’d have a missing notification on the text app. 

Dammit. 

The running water in the shower suddenly stops, and she swears under her breath, cursing herself for not having completed her revenge yet. But then - _fuck_. She can’t do it now, can she? If she were to do it, he’d not only change his code, but he’d delete his messages if he suspected she’d gone through them and she’d never know about this mystery girl. 

She tries to reason with herself that it doesn’t matter, that he’ll tell her on his own time and that friends don’t go through each others’ private texts. Even though, in the Big Troll War of 2015 those rules had tumbled down since day one. 

She jumps from the couch and leaves his phone in the pocket of his jacket, where it had previously been, and dives onto the cushion in record time before seconds later Killian strides out of the bathroom, hair still wet. He arches an eyebrow at her slumped form before sitting beside her and putting her feet on his lap, smiling fondly at her.

It makes her feel even worse. Shame creeps over her like a second skin: Not only is she a bad friend who reads friends’ text about friends’ potential girlfriends, but a friend that doesn’t tell her friend that she has been a bad friend for doing so in the first place. 

She is also an awful friend with a penchant for long sentences that make no sense.

There’s another feeling forming somewhere, right in the middle of her chest, that hurts and leaves her breathless and scared and paralyzed: the fear that he’s in love with someone else.

 

* * *

 

Emma is not proud of how she acts from then on whenever she’s in Killian’s presence. It mostly entails a lot of grimaces, forced laughs and silent consideration. Oh, and checking out the way Killian interacts with the rest of the girls in their group of friends and acquaintances. Which she realizes is _insane_ , and not healthy at all, but she hasn’t been sleeping well at all since she read that damn message and she’s kinda losing it. 

Since then, Emma keeps a very tidy, meticulous mental list of the possible candidates for ‘mystery girl’.

  * Tink: She and Killian are very close, but in a very brother/sister kind of way. Unless they are both into some Incest of Thrones thing, Emma doesn’t really see it happening.
  * Ruby: They’re constantly teasing each other and trying to get the upper hand on who makes the best innuendo (as in most gag-reflex or eye-roll inducing) but Ruby has made it very clear that he’s not her type.
  * Aurora: She may have had a crush on him for a while years ago but he’s never been anything but polite and friendly around her.
  * Mulan: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
  * Regina: She and Killian literally hate each other’s guts and would gladly rip the other’s face off, so unless it’s hatesex Emma doesn’t even have the stomach to consider it.
  * Milah: She broke up with Killian eons ago. They are still good friends to this day and keep in touch, and she’s the only one that Emma would mull over as a probable candidate. It’s the only logical one, the only thing that makes sense.



(It hurts).

 

* * *

 

Everybody knows about universal truths: water becomes ice at 0ºC and boils at 100ªC, the Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, the earth revolves around the sun meanwhile the moon revolves around the earth. 

A new universal truth for young students to remember everywhere: Emma Swan doesn’t take the fact that Killian may be into another girl very well. To put it lightly.

Translated into a more accurate and honest vernacular: Emma Swan gets trashed as all _hell_ during a night in the bar. She isn’t even gonna claim she sees him flirting with the bartender, or smiling at his phone as he texts somebody, or even talks to Milah for a while, who is also there with a handful of her friends; because it’s just not true. 

She’s in a funk and it’s awful and she doesn’t know how to handle it. Therefore, the positively _awful_ idea of a shots contest ensues with Graham and Ruby, the only losers gullible enough - or who love her enough - to go along with her. Will eventually joins them, but Emma knows better than to think it’s thanks to her persuasive powers and more of an urge of his to get as piss-drunk as possible. 

The last thing she remembers is goading Graham into another shot while Killian looks at her with something akin to worry on his face. Emma just growls ‘What are you, my dad’ and tips back her glass. Then everything goes black.

The next thing she knows, her head is pounding like hell and the muffled sound under her pillow isn’t helping. She palms the sheet, and the scent of Killian’s citrus-y detergent fill her nostrils.

_Fuck_. Of course he’d bring her to his place; it’s the closest one to the bar and she practically shows up there every week. She’s lying on the left side of the bed, and the right one is rumpled and empty, which means he was worried enough of her puking her guts out to stay by her side just in case to help her. 

That doesn’t make her feel even worse, not at all sire, nope. 

(Worst. Friend. _Ever_.)

His phone lights up once more, and she squints in the morning light. She doesn’t even want to see whatever it is that has woken her up, she just wants to shut the phone the hell up and go back to sleep, but as soon as she enters his code (he hasn’t even changed it yet, what a goddamn _loser_ ) her eyes pop out when she sees it’s another text from Will.

Before she knows what she’s doing - or so she tells herself to feel a bit better - she opens the text app to read what it says.

Again.

(She’s a thief, she’s a privacy thief. She’s the worst. She has no redemption arc to fulfill. She’s the worst friend to ever friend.)

And then she reads the conversation, when Killian first texted Will last night at 3:09 AM.

**_gonna get emma home, she’s trashed. i don’t know what was wrong with her_ **

_don’t worry your sorry little head, you can kiss her hangover away in the morrow_

**_you’re a douche_ **

_as if you’re not dying to kiss her. you’ve been dreaming of kissing her since you met her_

**_shut the hell up_ **

**_doesn’t mean i’m gonna kiss her. i can’t kiss her if she doesn’t want me to kiss her. that’s not what gentlemen do._ **

_you’re boring me to sleep. leave me alone._

_and kiss her._

**_asshole._ **

_mwah._

She shakes her head and stares back at the screen, because it’s too much too soon and sometimes she’s had such vivid dreams that she’s been almost physically heartbroken when she’s woken up to find they weren’t true. Aren’t extremely real hallucinations a symptom of something awful? Isn’t this in a Grey’s Anatomy episode? 

Great, now she’s hyperventilating.

Killian chooses this exact moment to pad into his bedroom, his socked feet almost inaudible on the carpeted floor. “Hey you’re awak - what are you doing?”

She tries to shove his phone under the pillow, but her reflexes aren’t that great when she’s sure a pretty good percentage of liquid in her body is still alcohol. “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing to me,” he says as he rounds the bed to sit beside her and pick his phone up. His mouth drops open as he realizes it’s unlocked. “Are you... going through my phone?”

“No.”

(Great, Emma. Great. Once more and he’ll buy it.)

“You are reading my texts? How did you even get past the lock code? I never gave it to you!”

She huffs, dropping her head on the pillow and giving him a disbelieving look. “Please - 4815? The Lost numbers? _Really?_ ”

“Shut up,” he growls as the tip of his ears turn pink. She’d tease him for that, but she’s too busy fiddling with his sheet and being embarrassed as all hell for getting caught - and for snooping around in the first place - and she doesn’t want to see him giving him _that_ look. He isn’t saying anything, though, and she can only imagine what he’s thinking of her, how he’s going to kick her out of his apartment after a long and well-deserved talk about boundaries. 

He keeps silent, and she can’t take it anymore. “I’m sorry okay, I didn’t mean to read them! I just wanted to tweet something from your account because I wanted to get back at you for that picture.”

“That was almost _four weeks ago_ Emma.” He pauses then, and a look of complete disbelief clouds his features. “Wait. Have you been reading them since then?”

“...no.”

(Great, Emma, fantastic. You’re doing just _great_.)

“Are you kidding me?” he shouts, and she bounces to her feet, pacing around and wringing her hands nervously.

“It was an accident! Will texted you while I had it, and he mentioned a girl, and I…”

“And you _what_? Thought it meant ‘oh, then it’s Swan approved, I should definitely read it’?”

She winces at the hurt and anger in his voice, and she stills in her place, hands curling into fists as she breathes deeply. “I was curious… and upset because you seemed to have talked about this girl with Will but not with me.”

He studies her for a long moment. “If that was the case, then why didn’t you ask me about it when you read it?”

She opens her mouth to answer, but the words get stuck. She looks at her feet, the blue polish Elsa had insisted they both paint their thumbnails with doing nothing to distract her. “I don’t know.”

He sighs loudly, facepalming. “You must know by now.” He then makes a sweeping gesture with his hand in her direction, as if to encompass all of her. “It’s you.”

She has never fainted before, but right now she thinks it may be within the realm of possibility, and _boy_ does she not want to. 

“What?” she croaks. 

He makes an odd noise in the back of his throat, and gives her a pleading look. “You. Emma Swan. Blonde, stubborn. Gets emotional over puppies.”

“What?” That seems all that she can come up with, and she’s sure she sounds like a complete and utter failure at life, but she can’t, for the love of all that is holy, help it.

Killian sighs, puts his hands on his knees and impulses himself to his feet, and slowly steps towards her until he’s standing right in front of her. “I’ve been in love with you since forever, how come you don’t know?” he says, enunciating every word as if she could miss them. 

“But… but there’s a girl!” she or her still alcohol-addled brain retorts, and Killian’s hands cradle her face.

“The girl is you! Didn’t you even, for _one second_ , consider the mere possibility that this girl you read about could be you?”

She freezes, and stammers a silent response for several seconds, because she _had_ considered it just for a moment, but had soon let it go, because...

His voice drops, and his eyes soften in understanding as his thumb caresses her chin. “You were afraid to hope?”

Tears cloud her vision, because _that’s_ exactly it. In her line of experience, getting her hopes up usually entails a broken heart, broken promises, and a broken Emma. She had learned long ago not to get her hopes up, especially when it came to relationships. “Maybe,” she confesses, and he kisses her forehead before he touches his against hers.

“You impossible woman,” he laughs, and then she’s laughing too, and then she, Emma Swan, worst friend ever, kisses him. Their first kiss had been the product of too much alcohol, a whole lot of sexual tension and the heat of the bar as they had been dancing together; but this one has nothing to do with it. It is light and sweet, a tentative brush of lips, until Killian presses his mouth insistently against hers, burying his fingers in her hair and getting a pleased moan from her in response.

She chases his lips almost unconsciously when he pulls away from her to lean his forehead against hers and press kisses over her cheeks, nose and eyes. She giggles, because it tickles, and it only makes him drop more kisses anywhere he can reach, brushing his scruff against her chin until she squeals. He laughs, and she swats his arm, and they sway in each others' arms by his mussed bed.

“No lipstick this time,” she smiles, brushing her thumb over his lower lip, and he growls and attempts to bite it. 

“Shut up,” and bends down to kiss her again.

 

* * *

 

Much later, he pulls out his phone from his pajamas’ pocket and gives her a stern look. She attempts to look as chastised as possible, and after they promise each other to ask first before falling into the stinky claws of the Big Troll War of 2015 again, he shows her his conversation with Will, which has two new texts.

**_i kissed her._ **

_what a gentleman._


End file.
